Marshmallow Fondant

Fondant looks so lovely on cakes, doesn't it?

Too bad it tastes like sweet playdough. Ok, ok, that's not fair. It's not BAD, just sweet. And the texture is weird. Like playdough. Or clay. And buttercream tastes soooooo much better. So I don't use it that much. When I found a simple recipe for marshmallow fondant (tastes marginally better than regular fondant, and much cheaper), I jumped on it.
Recipe:

Some marshmallows. Number/amount depends on how much fondant you need.
Put the marshies in a (microwave safe) bowl, and sprinkle with some water. Just enough to dampen them. Then toss them so they are all evenly damp.
Microwave until gooey. This doesn't take long.
Grease up a spoon and stir up the goo.
Start stirring in sifted powdered sugar. Until you can't stir anymore. Then dump it onto a VERY thick pile of powdered sugar. Knead powdered sugar in until you have a smooth, firm dough. Voila. Fondant.

Everything's better with butter!

I'm sort of a butter purist when it comes to cooking. And baking specifically. Margarine is supposed to be better for (or so they say), but I just don't like to cook with it. I have a tub of it in the fridge, though I'm not sure what it gets used for...grilled cheese sandwiches and mac&cheese, I guess.
A while back I was making cookies, and ran out of butter (oh the HORROR!). So when I made chocolate chip cookies, I subbed margarine. They turned out soft, and kind of cakey. I thought they were pretty nice.
Fast forward. I made oatmeal cookies last night. I use my grandmother's recipe, but they have never turned out like hers. My cookies are good, just not like my grandma's. I decided to sub part of the butter with marg. I usually use 2.5 sticks of butter, which is about 1 1/4 cups (each stick being 1/2 a cup). So I used 2 sticks of butter, and 1/4 cup of marg.
The outcome: the cookies were thin (like grandma's) but got too done around the edges (possibly due to the uneveness of my oven). However! I wasn't able to take them off the pans right away, and they cooled completely on the pans.
What a nightmare! I ended up with cookies stuck ALL over the pans. Even the ones I was able to get to right away stuck. I've never had that problem before. And they broke up really bad, just no structural integrity.
Sorry margarine, but I blame you. I will be sticking to butter for my baking from now on!

PS: The cookies tasted just fine despite this.

Annnnd more cakes.

This next trio is from Jack and Jeffrey's 6th Birthday.

Jeffrey's Army tank


























I think that was a 9x13, with a loaf cake on top. The gun was a Pirouette cookie. The tracks were Hershey Bars. The sand was crushed cookies of some sort. With plastic Army men. I especially love the one holding a candle like a bazooka!

And Jack's cake(s). Originally he wanted the Marine Corps symbol. So I researched to figure out how to do it. I ordered a special mold, and made it out of white chocolate. Then he decided he wanted a beach battle scene. I wasn't about to give up my awesome shield! So we decorated each layer differently.
On the left, Jack's beach battle scene, with crushed cookies for sand. On the right, my Marine Corps symbol, with white chocolate shield coated in gold luster dust. The "water" is just blue frosting smeared on the cake board.

Whooooo lives in a pineapple under the sea?
You guessed it! 9x13 cake. Shoulders, socks and shoes are Swiss rolls. Arms and legs are yellow twizzlers. Tie is a fruit roll-up. Everything else is frosting.

This next one was Luke's 4th Birthday cake.
The truck itself was a frozen buttercream transfer. First time I'd tried that particular technique. You simply lay a piece of wax paper over your image, and "trace" the image with frosting. The you freeze it. When it's frozen, you peel the paper off, and pop it on the cake. It's a great technique. The tires are marshmallow fondant. I'm not a big fan of fondant, and doubt I would ever use it to completely cover a cake. But I do like to use it for accents. It's easy to make, inexpensive, and tastes better than traditional fondant. My recipe is here.

Another use of fondant was on this requested cake. One of my son's friends was having a birthday, and his mom asked me to make a curling cake. Yes, curling. That strange sport that involves stones, ice, and brooms. So, I made a curling cake.
The circles are frozen buttercream. The stones are fondant covered mini donuts, topped with fondant. Nothing too difficult. The big deal on this cake was the actual icing. Swiss buttercream. I had never heard of it, but read about it over at Smitten Kitchen and decided I simply MUST try it. It was fab. But I wanted to smooth it out a little more. So I decided I would set the cake outside for a bit, and let the icing set. It was mostly butter, right? So the cold would firm it up. Well, it was -18 that day. The "bit" I left it out there actually FROZE the icing. When it thawed, the butter came out a bit, so the frosting was a bit yellowed. I'm the only one who noticed, though.
And yes, in the Winter our back deck often becomes an impromptu refrigerator/freezer. One of the perks of living in AK.

More past cakes.

Found these photos lying around. My first creative cake. It's a racetrack, people! This was Ty's 3rd birthday cake. I can't remember what flavor it was. But it was made from 2 9" round cakes, frosted. Then I added some green food color to coconut for the grass. The racetrack is crushed chocolate cookies (I think).




These are super-cute Lego block mini-cakes that I made for Ty's 7th birthday. These went to his class. I made a big cake, then cut it into "bricks", frosted with colored frosting, and stuck little fondant circles on for the dots. VERY time-intensive. But they turned out really cute!









Luke's 1st birthday cake. Very Hungry Caterpillar.
I love this one. I love it so much.











Luke's 2nd Birthday, Elmo fire crew.
My first real carved cake. Oy.
It was about to fall apart!
I still love it, with the Oreo wheels, Twizzler hoses, and gumdrop lights!

Blast from the past!

Ohh, this cake!
This was my first cake for the Wilton class I took in 2008. I still have the pan. I used it to make Ty's Speed Racer birthday cake for his 6th birthday, too.

The great disappearing necklace.

I love this necklace. I really do. After this picture, I took off the charms, and just had the center charm cluster. I love it. And I can't find it. It's somewhere in the house, but I don't know where. I will find it, because it's awesome.

Victorian charm necklace.

I like the idea of this necklace. The execution not so much. The second tier pendant didn't have a ring at the bottom, so I added one. But the wire made the necklace catch a little on my shirt, and it was never even. Then one of the rings holding it on broke.
I found some pendants I like better, so I'll probably redesign this one.

Beaded bubbles.

I saw this pattern in a magazine at Walmart of all places. As much as I despise Walmart, they actually have a pretty nice selection of beads and beading supplies. Anyway, I fell in love instantly. Never mind that I have never worked with seed beads. I had to have this pattern.
So I bought the magazine. I ordered the beads from Fusionbeads.com (they are awesome, BTW). I couldn't find the exact colors I was looking for, so I tried to substitute.
I bought the rubber O-rings at Home Depot. Something like $2 for a bag of mixed sizes.
I came across several problems. First, my mixed bag didn't list the sizes of the O-rings. And I couldn't figure out how to measure the rings to match up with the pattern. So I just separated out a small, medium, and large size from the assortment.
And I started beading. I found it to be much easier and less intimidating than I thought. I had to start over once, because I realized I had done the stitch wrong. But it worked up pretty quickly.

My first bubble looked like this.

Remember how I said I couldn't find the exact colors? Well, I needed a 1.5mm periwinkle cube.
I got a 1.5 periwinkle cube, but it wasn't the same kind as the pattern. And I somehow ordered a frosted lavender bead for round 3 instead of a light lavender. Long story short, I didn't like the way this bubble turned out. Back to the drawing board - or beading board in this case.


Attempt number 2:
I made the trip across town to Alaska Bead Company. They are so nice, and offer a 10% Military discount! Yay! On this trip I picked up 1.8mm Miyuki cubes in Lilac. That's what you see in round one of this bubble. Round 3 uses a pretty lavender I picked up on the same trip, instead of the darker frosted bead. I like this one much better. The edging is a bit shaky, but that will come with practice.




And the one I'm currently working on:
Basically the same as the first. I'm really enjoying
this project. I like the stitching of the beads. It feels
like combining several of my loves: beading, sewing,
and crocheting.

Put on a happy face!

When I was crocheting Luke's crown, Ty asked me to crochet him a happy face pillow. The pattern had a yellow happy face on one side, and a blue frowny face on the other. Ty wanted both sides to be yellow happy faces. I was happy to oblige. (See what I did there?)
I rushed to finish it yesterday afternoon, because I wanted to surprise him with it after school. Which means that I just slapped the mouths on there. They need to be resewn correctly.
No matter. He was over the moon. I haven't seen him happy like that in ages.

All hail the King!

King of the Meeps, that is.
I finished the crown I was crocheting for Luke.
I had a heck of a time getting it started. The pattern had a child, small adult, and adult size. Even after going up 2 hook sizes, the child size would have fit a newborn. I ended up making the adult size. With a size K hook.


He took it to bed with him that night.

Happy 8th Jack and Jeffrey!

Coming so soon after the Cub Scout Blue and Gold cake contest, I was exhausted, and feeling discouraged at the thought of having to make 2 more cakes. Thankfully, the boys came up with some pretty simple designs. I cheated this time, and used a boxed cake mix, since there was no structural stability worries.

Jeffrey decided on a pizza cake, which was fun and easy. Just used a 10" springform pan. I iced the cake with a tan frosting. The center was frosted with red to look like sauce. Then, I loaded white/off-white frosting into a bag, and Jeffrey piped it on with a grass tip for the cheese. The "pepperoni" was made with a reddish marshmallow fondant. Red is hard to make. It was more of a brownish pink. So after cutting out the circles, Jeffrey painted them with some almond extract tinted with a little red and brown. Voila! Pepperoni! It looked so convincing of the guests didn't want to eat it at first, because he didn't think pepperoni would taste very good on cake.
I assured him it wasn't real pepperoni.

Jack wanted Kirby. Isn't he cute?
He was made from a 10" springform pan for the head/body. Arms and legs were cut from the loaf cake I had originally made when Jeffrey wanted to make Mordor. Pink and red frosting. Eyes were made with marshmallow fondant, and outlined with black gel icing (Duff brand). Mouth was from the same.